“Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.” - George W. Bush

Friday, December 09, 2016

The Obama and Clinton ISIS calamity in Syria, Iraq and Libya continues. What were they saying in 2011.

The NATO war of 2011 delivered Libya not to one government with a monopoly over violence, but to a chessboard of competing militia groups who have allegiance to regional powers. ISIS flourished in the chaos and the refugee mess has created misery throughout the Middle East and Europe.Tribalism was unleashed and was aided and abetted by the regime changers in the US and Europe.Militia groups were either rooted in their cities, in their tribes or in an extremist world-view. One of the most powerful militia armies was from the city of Misrata. It is the one that is leading the fight to remove ISIS from Sirte. The US has been bombing Sirte with hundreds of raids, causing additional and continued misery on an incomprehensible scale.I thought it would be useful to look backwards as to who said and did what. Nigel Farage:

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CAIRO — Libyan militias backed by American airstrikes said they have cleared the stronghold of the Islamic State in Libya, a defeat that would set back the group’s ambitions in North Africa. The country, however, remains very unstable amid battles between rival militias, and the remaining militants could still undermine a fragile U.S.-backed unity government, analysts say.

Libyan fighters erupted in celebration in the coastal city of Sirte on Tuesday after a nearly seven-month struggle to oust the Islamic State, as the mostly pro-government forces were searching for any remaining militants.

The Islamic State’s hopes of extending its self-proclaimed “caliphate” beyond Syria and Iraq into Libya have been dashed, at least for now. But while their propaganda war and recruiting efforts have also been weakened, analysts said, the group remains active in other parts of the country.

Libya faces the specter of clandestine cells staging terrorist attacks, much like they’ve done recently in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan after battlefield reverses in those countries.

“The retaking of Sirte is certainly a negative blow to Islamic State affiliates in Libya because they will no longer have a territorial stronghold in the country,” said Claudia Gazzini, senior Libya analyst for the International Crisis Group. “This is significant because it no longer gives them the possibility to operate in the open or to recruit and levy taxes directly.”

We’re still not finished talking about Brexit, but next slogan to gain international attention may be “Nexit” given what’s going on in the Netherlands these days. In a very troubling sign, Dutch member of Parliament Geert Wilders was convicted of “hate speech” in court this week. His crime? Addressing a rally of his supporters earlier in the year where people were shouting “fewer” when speaking of how many Moroccan immigrants they wanted in the country. (The Guardian)

A Dutch court has convicted populist anti-Islam politician Geert Wilders of hate speech charges at the end of a trial he branded a politically motivated “charade” that endangered freedom of speech.

Presiding Judge Hendrik Steenhuis said the court would not impose a sentence on Wilders, saying that the conviction was punishment enough for a democratically elected politician.

The charges stem from a 2014 incident in which Wilders led supporters to chant that they wanted “Fewer! Fewer! Fewer!” Moroccans in the Netherlands.

You read that correctly. An elected representative was convicted in a trial for talking about public policy. If that doesn’t send a chill down your spine then you are considerably more comfortable with socialism than you should be. As for Wilders himself, he found the idea to be insane. (Reuters)

Dutch anti-Islam politician Geert Wilders said his conviction on Friday of discrimination and inciting hatred was “insanity” and said the three judges who handed down the ruling were “haters” of his far-right Freedom Party (PVV).

“Three PVV-hating judges declare Moroccans a race and convict me and half of the Netherlands. Insane,” he wrote in a tweet shortly after the verdict.

It’s interesting that the court decided not to impose any sort of sentence on Wilders, saying that the conviction itself was “punishment enough.” That conclusion is obviously based on the assumption that the public could take care of chastising the politician for his unpopular speech by ostracizing him. Since Geert is the founder and head of the Freedom Party (or more properly translated, “Party for Freedom”) you’d expect them to be taking a hit in the polls from this embarrassing defeat. How’s that working out? (Express.co.uk)

The party, led by the controversial Geert Wilders, would beat prime minister Mark Rutte’s ruling conservative liberals if elections were held today.

The Freedom Party (PVV) can count on 29 seats out of the 150-seat chamber, according to the latest IPSOS poll, making it the largest party in the Netherlands.

In the space of one month the popularity of the PVV has surged with an increase of six seats.In terms of European politics specifically, Nexit could be the next big thing. The growing unrest over the immigration crisis, terrorism and crime has spread across much of the EU and the Netherlands is no exception. If a large enough chunk of the people are hungry for change, Wilders seems to be the face of that movement. They have their own elections coming up in a few months and a sharp turn to the right would be an indicator that one more domino is getting ready to fall.

The item here which American observers might view optimistically however is the “insanity” which Wilders referred to. We can think of the Dutch as pleasant folks in a western nation who grow wonderful flowers if we wish, but underneath it all they are still essentially a socialist state. It’s a small and comparatively prosperous one to be sure, but they carry with them many of the typical hallmarks of socialism. One of those is the lack of any meaningful freedom of speech. Sure, you can say all sorts of things in public, provided it’s not too “controversial” or something the government doesn’t like. They technically have freedom of speech in their constitution, but as we’ve seen here with Wilders, all they have to do is slap the phrase “hate speech” on the charges and that freedom evaporates pretty quickly.

So with the rise of the Freedom Party, are people finally getting tired of this? We’ll find out in a few months, but it would be nice to see actual freedom on the rise and more of a rejection of socialism at large.

Here is Boondock Bob denying that fake news is fake news and at the same time pulling a Hillary in blaming a cybersecurity breach for his loss,

Idaho BobFri Dec 09, 02:36:00 AM EST

Obviously, the integrity of your data has been degraded, perhaps by some sort of cyber attack.

This refers to a story I put up yesterday in which the Israeli IDF admitted they put up a fake news story and map. Now Bubblegum Bob refuses to admit the fake news story is fake, this even though the authors of the fake news story, the IDF, have admitted it is a fake news story.

How can we describe Bob's aberrant behavior? Abnormal commitment to Israel to the point of denying reality or merely pure buffoonery? It's a toughy.

The nonsense flow continues gushing from the boondocks of the northwest.

You comment is ridiculous. You offer no specifics merely a jumble of words. What is it you are saying, that the Times of Israel created a 'fake news' story? That there story was hacked and altered? Are you really that stupid? Do you know what editors, proofreaders, and fact-checkers do at a newspaper? Or, are you saying that the IDF in admitting it made up a fake news story is actually creating a new fake news story? Appealingly inscrutable but what is the point? To make themselves look like fools to... Gee, I don't know who. Enlighten us. Or, better yet, if you have no actual point just leave us in peace.

No, I suspect you are simply throwing up a lot of words in a stream of gibberish to try to distract from the fact that you have no answer to the point I made in my post, a point you so desperately want to have.

2. Many firms also follows the strategy of keeping high prices initially and later offering high discounts. By keeping high price initially customers have a high refernce price and when they see a high discount based on the high base price, they have a notion that it is a very great deal. This lead to increase in sales.Example: A store launches new clothes range for fall and after a week or two offers 50% discount on them

Both of your questions are silly as one would expect. Speaking of both in general, they are both deceitful and potentially harmful but the only way you can compare them is in the specific and then only in a relative sense, that is, only in how much harm each respective instance produces. They can either be simple shit bordering on satire or they can be seriously dangerous. An example of the latter in the case of advertising would be the many years of false advertising by the tobacco companies. As far as fake news, we have many examples that have either the potential or have actually led to wars, such as, WMD's in Iraq, 'humanitarian crisis' in Libya, and the recent story put out by the IDF on Hezbollah.

The latest example of Fake News, "Pizzagate', could have proven disastrous. Luckily it didn't.

This involved the story about the Clinton's running a child sex ring out of a pizzeria. The only interesting things about the story were the assholes who started it and the idiots who spread it. The latter included some of Trump's people like Michael Flynn, the son of general Flynn. And while Gen. Flynn didn't specifically refer to 'pizzagate' himself, he did write an article saying that Clinton e-mails proved she was involved in "Money Laundering, Sex Crimes w Children, etc”.

Gen. Flynn has been called demented by some for all the conspiracy theories he posts on social media. It brings into questions Trump's judgement in appointing him National Security Advisor.

Of course, Pizzagate also went viral because of the millions of lesser morons on social media that spread it. In fact, the story was posted here. No point in naming names as to who posted it. That should be obvious.

Israelis have slipped back into a degree of complacence about the missile threat from Gaza since the war in 2015. The same could be said about their level of concern about a repeat of the 2006 conflict with Lebanon in which the terrorist group rained down missiles on northern Israel. Due to the success of the Iron Dome anti-missile system developed with the United States and the devastating counter-attacks against both Hezbollah and Hamas by the Israel Defense Forces, the terrorist groups are believed to understand they have more to lose than to gain from another war. But assumptions are no guarantee, and the Israeli government and military may not be taking into account the increase in the arsenals possessed by their enemies or whether sufficient resources have been allocated to ensure adequate civil defense in the event of another war with either or both.

That was the conclusion of a recently published report by Israel’s State Controller about Operation Protective Edge — Israel’s counterattack against Hamas terrorists in 2014. It pointed out shortcomings in the government and army’s response to the war as well as the possible impact on future conflicts. Up to two million Israelis don’t have access to adequate shelters in the event of missile or rocket attacks. The country’s early warning system also was found to be faulty and may not be able to detect all possible forms of attack or give citizens adequate time to seek shelter.

After extensive re-armament campaigns financed in part by Iran, both Hamas and Hezbollah may now be in possession of so many rockets that Israel’s highly successful missile defense systems might be overwhelmed. Throw in the possibility that as a result of the Syrian civil war, Hezbollah may now be in possession of at least some of the Assad regime’s chemical weapons arsenal, and the report paints a potentially fearful picture.

The report has caused considerable embarrassment for the government of Prime Minister Netanyahu and the IDF. That’s especially true since the report notes that the Cabinet has not spent much time discussing civil defense issues since the last war. But there is another conclusion to be drawn from the report. The strongest arguments mounted generally by critics of Netanyahu’s stance on the Palestinians have come from some of Israel’s former military and intelligence officers. They argue that Israelis are foolish to worry about the military threat posed by efforts to trade land for peace. These security experts assert that there is no border that can be drawn—even the 1949 armistice lines that the late Abba Eban described as “Auschwitz borders”— that can’t be defended by the IDF. In particular they point to the relative peace with Hezbollah in the North and with Hamas in the south as proof that deterrence works. Fears about replicating the dangerous aftermath of 2005 withdrawal from Gaza in the far larger and more strategic West Bank are exaggerated, they say, because Israel’s army is so strong and its missile defense so foolproof that even a hostile Palestinian state in the West Bank rather than a demilitarized one, would pose no existential threat.

But as the State Controller’s report shows, Israel’s security rests on assumptions that may be proven false if, encouraged by an Iranian regime that has been enriched and emboldened by President Obama’s attempt to appease them, Hezbollah and Hamas coordinate their next attacks and launch missiles in the kinds of numbers that might cause far more damage than the ineffectual campaign of 2014. If the West Bank were also held by a hostile Palestinian regime that refuses to accept Israel’s legitimacy that had access to such weapons, that peril would be compounded.

This wouldn’t be the first time the assumptions of Israeli military leaders were mistaken—the 1973 Yom Kippur War and the 2006 Lebanon War being just two such examples. The lessons of the last and the next missile war don’t just apply to those tasked with defending the Jewish state against Hamas and Hezbollah. They also apply to those who would further burden its defense by the creation of yet another potential terrorist missile launching pad in the West Bank.

I’m a former CIA officer and a Democrat. Here’s what Obama still doesn’t get about terrorism

...Obama also reiterated that there is no “war between the United States and Islam.” Islamic State and Al Qaeda, he said, do not speak for Muslims everywhere.

To me and many of my former colleagues at the Central Intelligence Agency, such pronouncements reflect Obama’s greatest blind spot in his fight against terrorism: He has been unwilling to acknowledge that Islamic ideology plays a role in what motivates terrorists to strike. Meanwhile, men like Imam Bujar Hysa, a jailed cleric in Albania, frame the war on terrorism quite succinctly: “Islam can coexist with other religions, but with democracy? No!”

Hysa isn’t an anomaly. He is a Salafist Muslim — a sect also called Wahhabi — who follows an ultraconservative set of beliefs propagated by Saudi Arabia and other Sunni Arab nations. Wahhabis do not believe in a separation of church (mosque) and state.

For them, government should be made up of religious clerics — and only clerics — that use the Koran to justify their decisions...

Magnificent Ronald and the Founding Fathers of al Qaeda

“These gentlemen are the moral equivalents of America’s founding fathers.” — Ronald Reagan while introducing the Mujahideen leaders to media on the White house lawns (1985). During Reagan’s 8 years in power, the CIA secretly sent billions of dollars of military aid to the mujahedeen in Afghanistan in a US-supported jihad against the Soviet Union. We repeated the insanity with ISIS against Syria.